Fly-Fishing Quick Tip – Roll Casting

Each week we will be posting useful fly-fishing tips to help everyone keep their skills honed and ready for the upcoming season. Keep an eye on our blog posts for helpful hints and ideas on fly-fishing techniques and tips. This week we wanted to post on roll casting. Often when fishing a stream or lake you will find trees, hillsides, or bushes behind you and cannot make a proper overhead cast. The roll cast is a great alternative cast to use in this situation. With some line on the water raise your rod to approximately the 2 o’clock position, so your rod is nearly straight up, but the rod tip is slightly behind you. You reel and hand should be next to your ear like you are talking on the phone. Bringing your rod up like this will pull some line off of the water and create an anchor point where the line touches the water. Quickly flip your wrist forward bringing the rod tip down to approximately 9 o’clock or eye level with a quick stop. This will roll the line right out and onto the water. Remember the line will only roll out as far as the amount of line you have past your rod tip, so if you want to get it further pull more line past your rod tip until you get the amount of line out you need.